You may be asking a wide range of questions such as – in which order should I learn Japanese? Which writing system should I know first? What are the things I must learn to have a good grasp of the Japanese language?
Learn hiragana and katakana together. Since there are two characters for each sound, it makes sense to learn them simultaneously. Practice writing the characters in groups like you did with uppercase and lowercase letters in elementary school.
Making flashcards allows you to practice writing and helps you memorize the alphabet. Pay attention to stroke order: In Japanese, the order in which you write characters makes a difference. Use a guide or workbook to make sure you get the order right.
You will be able to master the Japanese language more quickly if you follow this tried and tested order.
If you have been looking for answers to these questions, you have come to the right place because this article will shed more light on the order you should learn Japanese and why you should know in that particular order. So, let’s dive into the article.
Start learning with hiragana and Katakana
Although there are a few controversies about some particular areas of the order of learning Japanese, many Japanese tutors and experts agree that you should start learning with hiragana. Without a doubt, hiragana is the simplest and most basic writing system in Japanese. Therefore, you should start your learning process with this awesome writing system.
Perhaps you are thinking about why you should start learning with hiragana; we will show you some reasons for this:
It is simple to read and understand
Since hiragana is phonetic, it is easy for every learner to learn. If you speak western languages such as English and French, learning may be difficult at the beginning. However, it is not difficult to learn.
Every hiragana letter represents a specific sound. Hence, as you are learning this writing system, it becomes easy for you to read Japanese. Besides, learning hiragana is usually fun-filled and easy to monitor.
It consists of only 46 letters.
Another reason you should start with hiragana is that this writing system only features 46 letters. Therefore, you only need to master 46 things before you can start using it. This is significantly different from kanji, where you must learn over 2,000 characters. Imagine how overwhelmed you would be to start learning 2,000 distinct characters. So, you should avoid such demotivating problems by creating your learning process with hiragana. After understanding hiragana, you can move to other writing systems.
It enhances your listening and speaking skills.
As indicated earlier, every hiragana character refers to one sound (phoneme). Resultantly, every letter gives you a visual clue of a phoneme. With hearing and seeing, you can master every sound without much hassle.
Therefore, mastery of hiragana can significantly enhance your listening and speaking skills. It will be easier for you to understand the Japanese words better when the language is spoken to you, and this is because your ears have mastered Japanese during your hiragana classes.
It aids Japanese reading.
When learning to read Japanese, kids are usually first introduced to hiragana. Why is this so? Hiragana is essential for mastering reading skills. Learning hiragana will help you in reading kanji. When learning kanji, a few hiragana characters will be placed around kanji to ease the pronunciation. hiragana is fundamental to understanding other parts of the language.
It doesn’t take too long to learn.
If you put your mind to what you are learning, it doesn’t take a long period to study and understand hiragana. Many people have mastered hiragana within 1 or 2 weeks of learning it. So, it is a good way to start learning the Japanese language and get the inspiration you need to take your learning to the next level.
When you consider the various benefits of starting your Japanese learning journey with hiragana, you will agree that it is truly the right place to start learning the language. Once you have mastered hiragana, you can then move forward to other aspects of the language.
The Best 7 Ways to Learn the Japanese Alphabet
1. Use Hiragana and Katakana sheet and read it aloud
The first thing to do in hiragana practice is to use the hiragana sheet aloud together.
In rare cases, you may be reliant on the free resource here.
You can hear sounds directly from video or audio.
Therefore, when practicing Hiragana’s “Yomikata”, please read it aloud to yourself or your friend.
I recommended ” practicing while singing” while relaxing in the gym or “being interested in what the character is on.”
2. Even If you can’t write, You can read all
The second way to study hiragana is to increase the number of “readable characters” even if you cannot write. At first, you don’t have to be very conscious of the number of characters you can write I would recommend starting by “reading”. If you can read it, it will encourage you to learn more.
3. Practice Reading Hiragana And Katakana In Daily Lives.
When I started learning Japanese, I had a Japanese Class every day, but it took me around six months to learn all characters because I practiced only in the class. I can do faster If I set the goal and practice every day.
4. Practice from “a few words.”
Next, it is a practice method when learning “Kakikata” with the beginner vocabulary.
When practicing how to write hiragana, practice with “shortest possible letters”.
For example, try practicing short letters such as あなた、わたし、いぬ
5. English and Japanese are different things
You learn a new language, But You still find what is related to your tongue, and you will fail. You must find the way yourself and Keep practicing.
What are the three writing systems?
Japanese is significantly different as it uses three different alphabets: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Otherwise called Japanese writing systems, these alphabets must be mastered by any learner to be able to read and write the Japanese language correctly.
There are three alphabets in Japanese: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. They play different roles in Japanese texts. No one will be able to speak, listen, read, and write Japanese correctly without knowing all three alphabets. If you want to learn Japanese, you must learn all three writing systems.
Let’s shed more light on the three Japanese alphabets.
1. Hiragana
This writing system is known as the basic phonetic alphabet of the Japanese language. It is used for the representation of each sound in Japanese. Therefore, it can be theoretically assumed that every form of writing can be done in hiragana. Practically, Japanese people don’t write everything in hiragana because Japanese texts don’t usually have spaces. Hence, kanji must come alongside hiragana characters for people to understand a Japanese text.
Overall, there are 46 basic hiragana characters. Each character has a specific sound, but the meanings are not independent.
What are the main roles of hiragana?
Now, let’s look at the most critical roles that hiragana play in the Japanese language.
Hiragana is for creating grammatical structure.
The most prominent role of hiragana is to add grammatical structure to any Japanese sentence. Sometimes, when it is added to a word, it will alter its meaning completely. Therefore, if you don’t have hiragana symbols in some words, it will be difficult to make sense of them.
Hiragana is used for writing.
Generally, hiragana characters are utilized for writing different Japanese words. As suggested earlier, various Japanese words can be written hiragana entirely. You can substitute it with a hiragana symbol even if you don’t remember the right kanji characters to use in a particular instance.
hiragana is utilized for showing the pronunciation of a word
If there is an unusual kanji symbol in a Japanese text, it may be challenging to determine the pronunciation of such a word. However, if a hiragana character is added to the kanji symbol, it will be easier for you to know the right pronunciation. When used in this manner, such a hiragana symbol will be called yomigana or furigana. In some other situations, hiragana can be used to write some Japanese words that don’t have any kanji equivalent.
2. Katakana
The second Japanese alphabet is katakana. It is similar to hiragana because it is a phonetic system with every character having a specific syllable or sound. Like hiragana, a beginner must learn katakana as soon as possible to ensure that they can grasp the Japanese language well.
What are katakana symbols used for?
Katakana symbols are usually utilized for an array of things. But the most common and significant ones are non-Japanese words. In other words, katakana characters are often used for representing borrowed or foreign. You should note that several Japanese words are borrowed from English and a few other languages. So, such borrowed words will be written with katakana. In fact, over 80% of the time that katakana symbols are used in Japanese, they represent foreign words.
For English speakers, katakana makes it easy for you to speak Japanese. This is because when you understand the characters of katakana, it will be easier to identify different words borrowed from the English language.
Apart from foreign or borrowed words, it is also possible to find katakana symbols that are used for:
Names of some animals
Scientific words that don’t have any specific Japanese equivalent
Company names – the companies can be either foreign or local ones
Robot-speech – this refers to when Japanese texts are written as if robots are talking
Names of foods – this is particularly true for plant and animal foods as well as foreign foods
Onomatopoeia – these are words that are written in the same way as what they represent
Adding stylistic purposes to texts
Emphasizing some texts
Katakana characters are also useful in several other cases but are not as significant as the ones described above.
The third alphabet of the Japanese language is kanji. In general, kanji symbols are known as logograms, i.e., pictures used for ideas, concepts, or words. Kanji is a writing script adopted from the Chinese language and used to give more clarity and meaning to Japanese.
Overall, there are more than 50,000 kanji symbols in Japanese. But you don’t have to worry about these characters as an average native Japanese speaker doesn’t even know more than 10 percent of these characters. As a learner, your focus should be on the first 2,000 kanji characters; from there, you can start learning more kanji symbols.
What are kanji characters used for?
Typically, kanji symbols are important when describing certain content-heavy words. These words may include verbs, adverbs, nouns, and adjectives. As a result of this, you don’t need kanji if you only want to learn how to speak and listen to the Japanese language.
However, when it comes to writing and reading, you cannot do without knowing some important kanji characters. Kanji will probably account for over 40% of the printable symbols in an average Japanese newspaper. Therefore, if you want to read newspapers, books, food menus, and other things correctly, you need to familiarize yourself with kanji characters.
It is noteworthy that some people consider Japanese to have a fourth writing system which is called romaji. However, you should understand that romaji is not a real writing script on its own, but it is just a way of Romanizing Japanese. Romaji is only used for making it easy for foreigners to have a quick understanding of the Japanese language.
